There is no kind way to put this, so gird your loins and swallow hard.
If you are black, and support our ANC led government, you are racist.
Some may not practice racism and many may be anti-racist. Others may mistakenly believe that we live in a non-racist epoch. Some may be left wing and others may be moderate or right wing – but the bottom line is that to be an ANC supporter in South Africa is to be racist.
Accepting this is the first step to recovery.
We have to recognize that we are all, despite our ideologies, intrinsically bound up in the fabric of this liberal Communist inspired African system of domination, which bestows privileges onto us by virtue of the color of our skin, empowering us to undermine and destroy all that is “western-like”, and as long as we are demonstrating our loyalty to this doctrine, we are never “not benefiting” from our blackness.
The greatest challenge to us as black people, and especially to those who believe that they are transcending racism, is admitting to our own racist indoctrination and the very real possibility that we carry and practice unconscious racism. This is intertwined with the “carry over” feelings from the Apartheid era, which has understandably created resentment and the desire to accelerate the advancement of blacks, thereby encouraging us to overlook the return of bias, prejudice and discrimination - this time being directly and indirectly imposed on minorities, and sponsored openly by our ANC led government.
Black Consciousness is being tied to the reclaiming of the nation of Azania. It calls upon the Black people’s conscience, hearts and minds to rise up, to recreate and relive the life that was created by the Azanian civilization. A growing element of South African society, fueled by insecurities, are eager to recreate Azania. With full government cooperation, they have reinforced black superiority over other races and position us as the default human race that will realize the Azania dream.
In this Azania nation; blacks will be intellectually, morally and economically superior to all; this will be reinforced via language, family, psychological osmosis, history, society and social media discourse.
This black supremacist system of power, should the ANC continue to endorse it, will be in place for hundreds of years and will continue within our collective psyche of DNA memory. It will take a lot of undoing to extricate our psyches from that.
Under the current government sponsored system:
Our children will be inevitably racist even before they are born.
We are racist by virtue of black consciousness gone wrong, and our inaction of speaking out when we see institutionalized discrimination (no matter how it is justified).
We are racist through essence of still being tribal in our thinking, and by our tendency toward Xenophobia.
We are racist because we are black, and now even more so under the current ANC led government.
So what if you are born into this system?
We have no choice around our birth (as far as we know) but we do have a choice to learn from history and reject the roles we are endowed with by virtue of our colour.
The real questions arise later on in our development.
Are we comfortable with the status quo which privileges one race over others in all spheres of life?
Are we willing to be an oppressor of fellow human beings, especially when we were so recently oppressed ourselves, and know the feeling and ramifications all too well?
Can we do anything about it?
If we cannot live with the status quo the only choice we are left with is to become a race abolitionist.
There are no halfway measures in this equation.
For those who claim to be anti-racist or “non-racist”-- actions do speak louder than words.
We are either irrevocably race abolitionists or we are racist.
That is the hard cold truth.
If we are on the path of race abolition or anti-racism we must continue to recognize that this requires constant waking consciousness around our ongoing indoctrination as black Africans.
To remain on a conscious path we need to always bear in mind that we are recovering racists.
We need to be cognizant of our indoctrination and recognize that learned racism has been deeply embedded by our government in our lived-experience and has a way of rearing its ugly head even when we are not aware of it.
We can never assume that we are not racist and that we “get” western, or white people stuff. That is impossible really because we will never walk the path of a white person.
Empathy and solidarity are entirely different to speaking on behalf of or the appropriation of the lived-experience of people oppressed by blackness.
It is only by first recognizing and understanding our historical and personal embedded indoctrination that we can begin to diagnose and deconstruct the wider spectrum of ideological and systemic racism.
Until we do this we cannot work in solidarity with white people (and other minorities) to end racism entirely.
Working to end racism means working towards the eradication of the African system that privileges blackness. Is some “leveling up” needed to help those who were dis-advantaged for years under Apartheid – yes, of course!
Transforming only “certain things” and not everything is a fallacious and expedient approach to activism and helps maintain the ANC cronies and their advantaged comfort zone whilst paying lip service to anti-racism.
It is this halfway activism that perpetuates insidious and covert racism in the end and is as equally harmful as right wing racism.
Until a critical mass of black people are walking the path of race abolition and call out racism at every turn, we will never be able to rid ourselves of the ANC-Elitism, and claim to be living in a post-racist society.
The things black racist ANC supporters need to acknowledge:
We are constantly being told by the dominant discourse that we don’t have racism in this country anymore, or that racism died with Apartheid. We find black freedom fighters saying this, or blacks pursuing Azania preaching this. They don’t realise this quest in itself racist. Clearly the political pundits and leaders saying this are corrupt and benefitting economically from a cause that it has clouded their judgment.
Many black people deny that they are racist yet continue to show hatred, and discriminate against minorities.
Racist incidents are prevalent in our society which proves that we are not beyond racism and nor do we live in a color-blind-non-racist-rainbow-nation society.
There is always a deafening silence around these racist, violent, hate driven incidents from the larger black population, which either means that they do not care or they think they are not implicated in the incident.
Blacks are taught to not recognize systemic racism or their role in it, a web spun by our government to justify advancing their agenda to the detriment of minorities, and forcing the transfer of wealth.
Systemic racism is manifest in the discourse of domination that upholds racist values which are disguised in terms such as “reconciliation”, “emancipation”, “self-determination”, “and black consciousness”.
Without a doubt “rainbow reconciliation” is a false discourse peddled as an opiate for the masses and constructed to protect the ANC cronies, the well off, and the ANC black elite spinoffs.
Since the new race construct is based on a system of power and since blackness is the African system of domination over discourse, public spaces, media, sexuality, white people are the only people who “can be racist”. Of course since a large percentage of economic power still resides with minorities, this makes racism towards them easier to justify as part of “black economic transformation”.
There is an absence of interest in, or an inability to hear, what minorities are saying or think about the perpetuation of racism and black privilege and these views are seldom heard on mainstream media.
This renders these views invisible and the dominant black view is normalized and passed off as the only view that matters or makes sense.
There clearly is an urgent need for the entrenchment of programs to balance out the centuries of the systemic disadvantaging of black people. This should be accomplished with full support and participation from all races, without having to discriminate against minorities.
Black people reveal their unconscious racism by what they choose to remain silent about, for example the atrocious and systematic killings of minority-white-farmers, and their blind trust in the racist ANC.
By remaining silent on issues of systemic racism you are participating in the perpetuation of racism.
The growing black ANC elite and burgeoning black upper-middle class may have increasing economic wealth but they are unfortunately largely coming into their wealth by diverting public funds & illegally gained profits. All this while 16 million working poor have untenable living conditions that they are expected to, and forced to, endure whilst the ANC cronies live in relative, and often, obscene wealth.
The future for minorities has become dire in South Africa while black elite owned business thrive with their corrupt practices, hidden behind the ANC cloak.
We can’t overlook greed and mismanagement as a factor as well.
Corporate accountability is virtually absent in mainstream discourse and the business-owned mainstream media seldom focuses on the role that corporates play in the growing divide between the rich and the poor and the multiple layers of injustices that this sector wreak upon the poor.
The poor carry the economic burden of this savage capitalism and are expected to happily accept hand outs and live in desperation whilst on the other hand restaurants and hotels are mostly overrun by whites who apparently have the disposable cash to spend on luxuries.
The hard cold truth of the matter is that until we have a majority of black people working towards genuinely dismantling government sponsored black privilege and systemic racism we are all implicated in the perpetuation of racism.
It is for this reason that we need to ask if black people are making any real effort to fully dismantle the ANC sponsored racism or if indeed, the effort is spent on preserving ANC privilege instead.
In a society where the rumblings of revolution are heard in the distance, black people need to let go of their arrogance or naivety and ask themselves whether a revolution is going to have any sympathy for the obdurate nature of black consciousness and its refusal to genuinely become part of a just transformation that demands the equality of all its citizens.
May this article allow you to deeply reflect on what blackness is and learning how to undo the disturbing racist policies supported by our government?
Forward with radical social transformation, forward! By Chris Mapassa Former black Racist (also former ANC Member).
Menzi Solomon
Shange
Published on South Africa Today – South Africa News
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